Leave it to Psmith is the "comfort book" -- the creme custard (for me) of books -- that I always turn to when I need to brighten my mood. I must have read this book from cover to cover at least half a dozen times and parts of it umpteen times. It's amazing to think that I feel this about a book written a hundred years ago!
I love PG Wodehouse's brand of humour and I rank the Psmith books and the Blandings Castle ones ahead of the Jeeves and Wooster series. Leave it to Psmith brings the first two together and has a cornucopia of characters that gather together at Blandings Castle, some of them who are imposters and many who are trying to steal Lady Constance's necklace. Besides Psmith who is looking for a change in his profession and is willing to do anything Provided It Has Nothing To Do With Fish, there is the bone-headed Lord Emsworth - master of the castle, his imperious sister Lady Constance, his vacant son Feddie, the suspicious secretary Baxter, the crooked Smooth Lizzie and Eddie, the cheerful Eve, some of Psmith's and Eve's friends and the list goes on. There are several sub-plots within the main plot, quite a few of which include romantic entanglements. The book proceeds at a laugh-aloud, leisurely yet madcap pace and all the umpteen threads are neatly disentangled at the end.
It is said that "brevity is the soul of wit". Wodehouse clearly does not believe in that -- he often uses several words where one would suffice and a paragraph or two where a sentence would have been enough, and that's what makes his writing brilliant! Characters do not turn, they "spin on their axis". They do not slouch but "droop like a wet sock, as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against". He takes about twenty lines at the start of the book to essentially say that Lord Emsworth was sad because he had mislaid his glasses.
I've often laughed aloud while reading this book and if there is a bemused person sitting next to me, I invariably ask him or her to read the page that I am on. Sometimes, that person fails to find the humour, so clearly, PG Wodehouse is not for everyone. But for me, this is my #1 fiction read of all times!
Cons: The Wodehousian style of humour is not for everyone
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